Re: RAC storage options

You must have physical disks shared between two or more computers. That, in particular, automatically
eliminates NFS, CIFS (SMB) and other file sharing protocols. Netapp (used by our company) is not
an NFS server, it implements locking and is a SAN implementation disguised as NFS. Operating
system must be able to lock blocks on the device and prevent other nodes from accessing the
same block. That is not supported by NFS3 protocol. There are several SAN vendors, not just
NetApp and EMC. There is IBM, StorageTek, Dell, HP, Hitachi and EqualLogic and probably some others that
I don't know about (however unlikely that might seem). All those vendors are more then willing to
discuss RAC and offer solutions. PC and printer companies (at least according to Mr. Scott McNealy)
are willing to offer aggressive discounts to undersell EMC, IBM and StorageTek, which are the
biggest players in the field. IBM also offers agressive pricing with their Shark array and is
trying to wrestle a chunk of the lucrative SAN market from EMC.

On 04/13/2004 03:06:58 PM, Daniel Hanks wrote:
> We're looking to upgrade our current database architecture, to something that will handle potentially 3-4 times our current load/size, etc. We're looking at RAC as an option, but I'm wondering what storage options are available for RAC. At a Technology Day about a year or so back, they showed a small RAC cluster using a NetApp for the shared storage component. What other storage options are available? EMC is the obvious other, but what else is available/supported? Anything that serves lots of disk via NFS?